


rubies in the rough

by deniigiq



Series: Inimitable Verse [22]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Family Dynamics, Family Secrets, Gen, Police vs. Vigilantes, Secret Identity, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team Red, Team as Family, Vigilantism, a reformed anarchist a cop and a vigilante walk into a bar, brief discussion of justice, no one leaves because no one speaks and everyone's secrets are vast and complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26018926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “It’s gonna storm,” Dave pointed out as Miles set the glass with its remaining ice on the counter. “You might want to turn back around.”Miles tipped the glass back and forth and nodded.Dave paused in refilling the Brita pitcher.Miles wasn’t his son. He didn’t know him that well. But the way he was playing with that glass was a little suspicious.“You running from somethin’?” he asked.(Miles and Dave have a chat about the secret that Miles keeps from his family.)
Relationships: Jefferson Davis & Miles Morales & Rio Morales, Miles Morales & Ansel West (Dave)
Series: Inimitable Verse [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1117746
Comments: 35
Kudos: 482





	rubies in the rough

Coffee

Creamer

Lettuce

Bread

Salami

Chicken

Cherry tomatoes

Cinnamon

Sack of sugar

Butter

God help them, they always seemed to need butter. He didn’t know what war on dairy Addie was waging in her household, but every time Charlie came home from her place, she was complaining about margarine.

‘Dad,’ she said, ‘Mom’s toast is all wrong. It’s weird. It’s crunchy. It’s got all these nuts and seeds and stuff in it, and it’s just all wrong. I don’t like it. I like your toast. Can we have toast for dinner?’

The answer was no. No we cannot have toast for dinner, because I have spent the last half an hour making Hamburger Helper and so that is what we are eating until there is no more left to eat--

Wait, actually. Add Hamburger Helper to the list.

“Heya, Dave.”

He wasn’t surprised to be coaxed out of his brooding by one of the spiders. They’d been crossing into the area more and more often these days and Dave hadn’t had the energy to keep up with the façade of chasing them back out.

It was yet another tally against him in the neighborhood’s books, but he’d decided not to let it get to him. Better a half-assed Daredevil than no Daredevil at all.

“Miles,” he greeted. “How’s it going?”

Miles landed neatly on the little stump of a chimney next to him.

“It’s goin’,” he said. “It’s hot tonight.”

That it was. Dave was working himself into a steamed cabbage in this damn suit.

“You got something to drink?” he asked Miles as he returned to watching his chosen patch of street down below.

“I had some water earlier.”

Hm.

“How early was earlier?”

Miles huffed. Dave persevered and waited until he gave in and flopped down next to him on the rooftop.

“Like an hour ago or something,” Miles said.

Hm. Probably before he left Brooklyn.

Dave levered himself up and dusted grit off his knees. Miles’s head followed up him, but he didn’t stand to join him. Dave raised an eyebrow and held out a hand.

“Now? But I just got here,” Miles pouted.

Kids, man.

Dave waited.

Miles sighed.

Miles was two years ahead of Charlie, but, honestly, two years meant fuck-all in the grand scheme of things. The humidity in the city made people forget that they needed to hydrate. Kids and old folks were the worst offenders.

Dave no longer had enough fingers to count the times Charlie had come slinking into the kitchen to be miserable on the table and had gone silent when he’d asked if she’d finished the Gatorade he’d put in her lunch.

Miles was a much softer, sweeter kid than she was, but he was still a kid. And he was still being miserable at this table.

Dave waited until he gave in and peeled off the mask and finished the glass of ice water Dave had foisted upon him. It didn’t take long.

It was like he hadn’t noticed he was parched.

“It’s gonna storm,” Dave pointed out as Miles set the glass with its remaining ice on the counter. “You might want to turn back around.”

Miles tipped the glass back and forth and nodded.

Dave paused in refilling the Brita pitcher.

Miles wasn’t his son. He didn’t know him that well. But the way he was playing with that glass was a little suspicious.

“You running from somethin’?” he asked.

Miles set down the glass abruptly.

“I’m headed back now,” he said. “Thanks for the water, Dave.”

“Uh-uh. Nice try. You sit yourself back down, son,” Dave said, maybe a little snappier than was justified for someone else’s child.

Still, though, the tone worked. Miles’s hurry was thwarted, and he was left playing with the cup again. Dave came around behind him and pushed on his shoulder until he sunk into the chair he was stood hovering over. Dave set his own helmet down on the table between them alongside his cup of iced tea.

“Go on,” he said. “I got all night.”

Miles didn’t lift his head, but his eyes flickered up.

“You want me to guess?” Dave asked. “Fine I’ll guess. Grounded?”

Miles sighed and shook his head.

Hm.

“Can’t go to the ball?”

Miles didn’t rise to the bait.

“Did you have a fight with your dad?” Dave asked gentler this time.

Miles sighed.

Got it. Third time’s a charm.

“That’s tough,” Dave said. “Me and my dad didn’t get along much, either. I know how it feels. You’re welcome to stay as long as you want. We got a pull-out couch.”

Miles fidgeted.

“It’s okay,” he said. “He’s just—it’s not--it’s not his fault.”

Dave lifted an eyebrow.

“What isn’t?” he asked.

Miles started playing with one of the seams of his suit.

“It’s hard to explain,” he said.

Dave picked up his tea and sipped it slowly. Miles glanced up again, caught sight of him, and dropped his eyes.

Dave let the butt of the glass knock against the table when he put it down.

“I know I don’t work with the four of you that much,” he said. “But I’ve been around the block a few times. Whatever you say will not surprise me.”

Nothing could be as surprising as learning that these streets had once been patrolled by a blind lawyer wearing the face of the devil.

Miles’s arms dropped and went loose at his sides.

“My dad’s a cop, Dave,” he said.

Ah.

A pig.

Ohp, wait. Nope. Don’t say that. Swallow that back. Stomp it down, stop it down. Context is _everything_.

“And?” he asked.

Miles huffed at his knees. Dave turned his attention slowly inward, forcing the muscles in his back and neck to loosen. There was no need to go out swinging. Not yet, anyways.

“He’s just—he’s a stickler for rules and stuff,” Miles blurted out. “It’s always, ‘do this’ and ‘don’t do that’ and ‘I _know_ you’re not talkin’ back’ and ‘did you already do your homework? Are you paying attention in class? What did you learn today’—like, _Dad_. Can you, for once, just leave me alone? Or like, I dunno, ask about me as a person?”

Oh. Interesting.

Dave watched the frustration bleed out of Miles’s shoulders and into his hands. It dripped from his fingers into puddles on the floor at his feet. Those puddles threatened to stay there—there would be no evaporation with this storm coming upon them.

“Sorry, Miles. That’s not really my experience with dads,” Dave said. “My old man wasn’t super interested in me, so I don’t really know what that’s like. But it does sound like he’s trying to motivate you to do things that’ll help you out in the long run.”

Miles’s neck tensed and he bit his lip firmly at the edge of the table.

That was the wrong thing to say, then. Alright, moving right along.

“It must suck, though, for you to always feel like he’s pressuring you,” Dave continued, watching carefully as Miles’s traps started to loosen up again. “Probably feels like he’s not seeing you as a person sometimes.”

Water dripped out of the faucet into pot in the sink.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be who he wants me to be,” Miles said quietly.

Woof.

Now those were some feelings. Just about as heavy as the air outside, they were.

It was hard to remember what it was like to be 14 years old, to be sitting at a table in the cafeteria, holding a progress report that showed his grades taking a nose dive.

A parabola, they called it in math class. A negative one.

Dave might have failed the test, but at least he’d learned the name of that damn thing, right?

Eventually someone would realize that him and numbers had never mixed, and Mom would stop making him take all those classes that Flora had passed just fine. Eventually, Mom would write him off as a typical Hell’s Kitchener with no ambition or brains and would focus the rest of her hopes and dreams on Flora.

“When I was your age, I felt this huge void of nothingness towards all my folks,” Dave said.

His fingers met each other around the bottom of the sweating glass, finally cold after a long day of sweltering.

“My big sister is sharp like this,” he snapped his fingers next to his ear, “But me? Never had it. I flunked so many classes, Miles. I was flunkin’ classes in middle school. People were throwing things like ‘ADD’ and ‘dyscalculia’ and so on around my head, but I know it wasn’t anything like that. I was just—not stupid, but not Flora—that’s my sister. I’ve always been good enough. Never good. Never great. Just ‘good enough,’ you know? And after all this time of bein’ pushed by my mama to make something of myself and then pushed away by my daddy for choosin’ the wrong thing to make of me, I just decided ‘fuck ‘em.’ They don’t care about me.”

He watched Miles’s eyes close slowly in a blink.

Guilt was weighing them down.

“I love my parents,” Miles said softly. “I’d do anything for them.”

Sweet kid.

Good boy.

“They’ll love you too if you tell ‘em they’re making you feel like you’re an empty box,” Dave said.

He stood up and went to go set his glass in the sink.

“Dave?”

He glanced back but didn’t turn around.

“It’s raining.”

Mm-hm. It sure was.

Miles spoke to his mom in Spanish. Dave knew bits and pieces from work and from Charlie talking to Mason, Addie’s boyfriend. He’d picked up enough to hear the soft pleading in Miles’s tone as he told his mom that he was going to stay with a friend for the night and that he’d see them the next afternoon after school. He called her ‘ _Mami_ ’ and asked her to tell Dad not to freak out.

Dave got the feeling that Dad was a little more uptight than Mom here.

Mom evidently said yes.

Dave smoothed out the sheets on the sofa bed.

“You think you’ll ever tell them?” he asked as Miles came over to peek around his arms.

Miles shrugged.

“I dunno,” he said. “Maybe not. My dad would hate it.”

Hmm.

Yeah, if the guy was a cop, Dave could see that.

“When did you tell Charlie?”

“Hm? Oh. She found out pretty quick,” Dave admitted. He rubbed the back of his neck at the memory. “She digs through my shit all the time. Found the old suit one day when her mom dropped her off before I got home. Found the new one within hours of Spidey giving it to me. She’s smart like her aunt—uh, Tams, I mean. Old bandmate, not my sister. Course, as soon as Chuck worked it out, she went runnin’ to Tams and Tams came bustin’ in here, mad, hurt, cryin’. They were worried, you know. As anyone in their right mind would be.”

Miles cringed. Dave wished that he had something better to tell him.

“Tammi’s still real mad about the whole thing,” he said a little sadly. “But I know she won’t tell anyone. And Chuck follows her lead for damn near everything, so I guess that’s it for me.”

Miles chewed a lip and petted at the sweats and t-shirt Dave had laid out for him. They were Charlie’s. Too big for her by a longshot and even then, still too big for Miles. They’d work.

“My dad hates Spiderman,” Miles said quietly.

Oh _no_.

“He’s always saying that that guy at _The Bugle_ is right; Spiderman makes his own justice. He doesn’t like the definition we all agreed on and him and all the other vigilantes are taking liberties with the law. I don’t think he’d want to arrest any of them. But I think he wishes that they’d all just go away so that he and everyone else could do their jobs without people saying that they’re not as good as Spiderman or Daredevil or whoever.”

Man.

That sucked.

“I get why you wouldn’t want to tell him,” Dave said.

“I believe in justice,” Miles nearly whispered. “But Dad doesn’t want to admit that Spiderman does things that other people can’t. It’s easier to just say all the Spideys are reckless and stupid and don’t know what they’re doing and the lines that they’re crossing.”

“He believes in the system,” Dave translated.

Miles dipped his head in a nod.

“Do you?” Dave asked.

Miles frowned and then shrugged.

“I believe in helping people,” he said. “In doing what’s right for the sake of it. And I think that a lot of the police are really fast to act when they don’t have all the pieces and they don’t really look back on themselves when they say that _we’re_ the ones jumping to judgements too fast. I mean. At least I’ve never shot anyone.”

Oof.

Ow.

Yeah.

“It’s complicated, kid,” Dave said.

“What if one day, my dad shot me?” Miles asked.

 _Woof_.

“He wouldn’t,” Dave said, knowing deep in his heart that that was true. True as a full moon.

“I know,” Miles said. “But sometimes, I wonder.”

Sounded like a nightmare.

“Go shower,” Dave said. “You’ll feel better.”

If Charlie was Miles and Dave was just Ansel West, instructor at Spitfire & Co., and Dave found her out in an alley, wearing a skintight suit and boots with thick soles, then he would cry.

Just choke and then cry.

Partly because he’d be horrified not only that his baby was out there, having guns pointed at her, having knifes drawn across her skin, taking the impact of fists against her fragile baby bones, but also because he’d have to cope with the fact that she was sinking knuckles into the flesh and bones of others with gritted teeth. Like she meant it.

Like she wanted it to hurt.

But that wouldn’t be all.

Dave would cry because he would feel helpless and small in the face of a child who stood taller and prouder than he did for her.

He would look at her and see a five-year-old Charlie. He would feel her little fingers with their little nails in his hands. And he would know in that moment that he wasn’t good enough.

He wasn’t doing enough to keep her safe. He wasn’t being the person who she needed him to be. She was coming home, hiding wounds, hiding secrets, hiding tears, and he was walking around, getting on her case about her needing to brush her teeth and do her homework.

For that, he would cry.

When Miles’s parents found out—and they _would_ find out--Dave had no doubts that his father would cry.

Dave didn’t know this man.

He himself would have nothing to do with cops. He found it hard to empathize with them. Found it hard to even comprehend their logic.

But as he too, was the father of a brilliant and brilliantly headstrong child, he knew this thing.

“One day,” he told Miles before turning out the light. “You should tell him. It should come from you first. Don’t let anyone take that opportunity from you. That thing is _yours_ to hold and give away, you hear me, kid?”

Miles looked at him quizzically from behind the sheets Dave had tossed over his head. He nodded, and Dave turned off the light.

**Author's Note:**

> so the kids in the discord are always encouraging me to write more Dave and they are wise beyond their years, so I listen to them every now and then. 
> 
> I liked this piece enough to include it here.
> 
> If you, too, would like more Dave (or more bits and pieces of Inimitable in general), little scraps can be found in my **ficlets** tag on tumblr here: https://deniigi.tumblr.com/tagged/ficlet


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